


a piece of writing undeserving of a name

by chronowitch



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Metafiction, also ive never read the epilogues or homestuck 2 so like even though this ostensibly relates to them, but after the epilogues, i had no idea what i was doing at all, or at least the author's attempt at it, set some nebulous time before homestuck 2, unbetaed unedited i cannot bear to look upon my creation any longer, update edit note whatever: at the time of writing this i had not seen dirk in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 11:17:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronowitch/pseuds/chronowitch
Summary: It’s all just another variable in this endlessly complicated equation. If x equals h^2, then how fucked are we? Answer: Incredibly, but not in a way that can be accurately predicted, or that necessarily even matters.





	a piece of writing undeserving of a name

**Author's Note:**

> i just wanted to write this and i get the feeling it wanted to be written. not much really happens here and it is largely unintelligible but i had a good time. dirk does not though.

**Second person is traditional, but doesn’t feel quite right for something like this. Too casual. Directly connects the viewpoint character to the reader. First person is too intimate, and provides a look too close into the mind of someone it’s better to not be in the mind of. Third person should suffice for now.**

**A young man stands alone in a room within a structure that stands alone in a vast expanse. His name is uncertain these days. He’s spent entirely too much time standing alone, but that’s irrelevant, he’s irrelevant, or at least he should have been. He should have been just another character in a story a hundred times vaster than him alone, a story that sprawled and meandered and refused to stop.**

**The thing is, he’s been doing his best to at least halt the growth.**

**No, too distant, too informal. First person? Can’t hurt to try.**

**I glance around the small room before sitting back down and returning to writing. I can’t end this, but I can make it different, shape it, change it, and control the growth. It’s like a fucking hydra, except instead of two heads, it’s three, maybe, or four, or a dozen or twenty, and I’m just there trying to cauterize the stumps before we end up with a thousand-headed beast. **

**Hercules could have gone for the stomach. This is a shitty metaphor.**

**What would the stomach be in the case of this hydra? The immediate answer is the author, but it’s out of his hands now. We’re all just waiting to see what happens next, and I’m trying my best to make sure that what happens next fixes ** ** _something_ ** **. I know better than most that the alleged ending hurt more than it healed, and I know that it was my fault. The story needed a villain. I ended up forced to fill the role, even though, and I mean this in the most honest way possible, I’m nowhere near competent enough to do that. Part of why it was such a trainwreck.**

**I’m not sure where we’re going from here. It’s all just another variable in this endlessly complicated equation. If x equals h^2, then how fucked are we? Answer: Incredibly, but not in a way that can be accurately predicted, or that necessarily even matters.**

**Sure, I talk a big game, “taking over” and all that, but I haven’t truly been in control for a long time. I’m not sure if I am now, even. Is the me sitting there hunched over a keyboard making an honest try at writing but doing more talking to himself than anything else really me and the result of my own desires, or is it just another stranger guiding my hands? Are these words mine or am I a mouthpiece? Does it matter, at this point, when I can barely tell the difference between waking and sleeping, between living and dying, between myself and myself and myself and myself and myself and-**

**If it was possible, I would have gone back and deleted the last paragraph entirely.**

**Let’s get metafictional. The ship of Theseus, the classic thought problem, is it still the same ship when all of it has been replaced and the owner has changed? If a man woke up one day to realize he didn’t recognize himself, that the only thing he had in common with his past self was that they shared the same body and even that had been replaced by the natural processes of cells, that his interests and personality and even his memories had gradually changed over time, would he be the same man he used to be?**

**If a story diverged from the original idea, with different interpretations of different characters and a completely different direction, written by someone different in a different way, is it still the same story?**

**Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of different versions of me exist. Everyone who has ever seen me has their own interpretation, varying slightly to drastically. Some of these are put to words, some remain simply a creation of the mind and never leave, and who am I to claim that me as an irredeemable monster is any more or less true than me as just a human being trying to get by? I know who I am in this moment, but that’s just another random personal interpretation. Would the true version of me be the one closest to the original author’s wishes? Does there even exist any sort of true version of me? I don’t have answers to any of these questions. I wish I did.**

**I’ll tell you a few things about this version of me and it’s up to you to judge their personal truth. I regret what I’ve done. I want to fix things. I loved my friends and I never wanted to hurt them. I am, truly, deeply, to the fullest extent possible, exhausted by existence.**

**Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of different versions of me exist and they don’t stop being me by virtue of difference alone. There could be a me who’s so deeply and fundamentally different from every other version and they would still be me. It’s similar for you, but inherently different even just in terms of sheer volume. Everyone you’ve ever met has a slightly different interpretation of you. These versions exist in their minds and their expectations, not as words on pages or screens, and unless you’re some sort of celebrity, there aren’t nearly as many versions of you as there are of me.**

**And at least you’re in charge of your own thoughts. Let’s get deep into the metafictional unreality that is having your entire existence based in words and pictures that you’re fully aware of and can’t do anything to change with your own power, because you can’t exist without someone writing you out and you can’t exactly force ---------**

**You can’t make someone write you how you want to be written when you don’t even -----------------**

**This is unintelligible. I’m not sure-**

**He’s not sure what he was trying to say. There seems to be an awful lot of uncertainties in his life these days, with even who he’s supposed to be thrown into doubt. What is it that he does all day? Claim to write and then spend twenty minutes monologuing at the wall before breaking down- Oh, he’s typing something.**

**Really? Resorting to third person and cheap insults? I thought you were better than that.**

**I thought...**

**No, never mind.**

**Why don't you get back here and let me talk? There's nothing you can do to silence me. I'll continue in some form regardless of what you do. I know for a fact that there are other people eager to put their own interpretation of me out in the world for everyone to be able to see. You can't kill me in any way that matters.**

**You could end this here, but that wouldn't be a satisfying ending, now would it?**

**He stands up from the desk and manages to cross the heavily disarrayed room without tripping over anything, this time at least. The door is thrown open unceremoniously and he goes to the blank walls of the hallway. “Death of the author. Death of the canon. The narrative is anything I want it to be.” He mutters almost mockingly, removing a likely stolen stick of orange chalk to vandalize the walls with. “Don’t you understand yet?”**

**I’m trying to say that I’m fucking being coerced.**

**Of course, I could have just written this regularly, but this is more dramatic. Can you picture it? A madman talking to someone who’s not even there through scratching words onto a spotless white wall, rambling until the chalk runs out about the fact that by taking in every version of himself there is, he destroyed himself? I’ll ask you again. If you were to wake up one day and realize that you had fundamentally changed to the point where the past you wouldn’t recognize the current you in the slightest, are you the same person?**

**Let’s get metafictional. I began as a concept and I will end as a character. Nothing more, nothing less. Somewhere along the line, someone decided to make me aware of this, and it’s just been suffering ever since. So what does that mean? It means that I’m a vessel, a plaything, little more than a puppet myself regardless of how much control I claim to have. Until it’s me writing me writing these words, a logistical impossibility, it’s impossible to know if any of my actions are actually mine.**

**And I’m completely fine with that. I think. Or at least I’m lead to think in some way or another, and maybe this whole breakdown in neon chalk is completely scripted, and maybe-**

**The chalk breaks in his hand and he drops it to the ground as he slumps down himself. His breathing is ragged and sharp. It becomes suddenly obvious that, perhaps, just maybe, he’s been pushed too far.**

**The young man’s name is Dirk Strider. He wants to make amends. He is very tired. Those things are, at least for the moment, the only certainties he has.**


End file.
